People talk about posture as a basic but it’s not, it’s a fundamental that lies at the very heart of the golf swing.

The angle of your spine at address will dictate your swing plane, it will place your arms and hands in a position where they can function properly and it will determine how effectively you can rotate.

So it is impossible to over-emphasise the importance of setting and maintaining good posture in the golf swing.

Feel the strain

The perfect address position should NOT be comfortable. Most of us, whether we are gym-goers or not, can understand that doing 10 proper press-ups offers a much better workout than doing 100 cheating press-ups.

This is exactly how you need to view your address position. If you get the right posture, you’ll engage certain muscles that a poor posture will not.

Your abs, glutes, thighs and calves will all be engaged at address and as such they take on a certain amount of strain.

A good address position is one that will be uncomfortable to hold. But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Of course, we all have a tendency to gravitate to wards doing what is comfortable (think about how you are sitting right now) but you need to resist that temptation.

Finding your posture

A great way to find the ideal posture is to stand perfectly upright and then, bending at the hips and keeping your back straight, tilt your upper body over the ball.

At the point at which you begin to lose your balance, flex your knees a little. This represents good posture with the right amount of knee flex. Notice how many of your muscles are engaged – this is you in an athletic, dynamic position.

Once you have set your posture, the idea is to maintain it during the swing. Setting and then maintaining that spine angle is something that every good player has in common, regardless of his body shape.

So as you rotate your upper body, reaching the top of the backswing and then you drive through the downswing and into the ball, aim to keep your back at the same angle throughout.

If your height changes during the swing so will your swing arc, making fat and thin shots far more likely. So think of your spine angle at address as the constant fulcrum around which your body rotates during the golf swing.